Instagram set to ramp up advertising

Instagram is to start pushing ads on its service far more prominently, it’s been revealed.

The Facebook-owned image sharing social network has outlined how it will be pushing to monetise its service on a company blog post.

Apparently, this push will come in three areas: “Expanding ad offerings to include action-oriented formats, enabling more targeting capabilities, and making it easier for businesses large and small to buy ads on Instagram.”

If you don’t speak ad jargonese or understand business talk, you might want to avoid the rest of the post – it’s essentially aimed at Wall Street types, after all. Allow us to translate (via Recode).

Instagram will start rolling out “direct response” ads with action buttons that allow a user to buy, sign up for, or install something (like an app) right there and then.

The photo sharing network is also going to give advertisers far more information on its users – that’s you. They’ll have access to more of the information you share about yourself on Facebook and elsewhere, allowing them to target ads at you more precisely.

Finally, the report comes down to the nitty gritty – Instagram is going to start showing you more ads.

This isn’t mentioned directly in the aforementioned blog post, of course. But if the company is going to such great lengths to empower advertisers, you’d better believe it’s going to ramp up their opportunities to use those powers.

Don’t expect Facebook to be too heavy handed with these changes – it’s treated the service with kid gloves since its acquisition, and it won’t want to mess up its slightly cooler image. But make no mistake, the ads are coming.

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